Just run.

January 10, 2006

I threw on my running tights today and hit the Embarcadero. It was cold. See-your-breath cold. I haven’t been running outside lately – I can’t say why. I’ve been keeping warm on the elliptical or a treadmill.

But today I knew I had to go outside and see my breath in front of me.

I threw my shoulders back and ran head-proud. I never liked wearing running tights and now suddenly I do. I feel sleek and fast and strong in them.

Along the path I noticed that there were more runners than usual for 6:30am. Slightly overweight joggers, lumbering along, pain painted across their faces. Contorted grimacing. Lots of them.

The Resolution Runners.

I hadn’t noticed much of an influx of Resolution Junkies at the gym during the first few weeks of January and that surprised me a little bit. But here they all were. Lumbering and grimacing in oversized shirts and new shoes.

They infused me. Their determination. Their will. Their courage in the face of pain and agony and a long road to haul.

Sure, most of them will fall away in the next two months, but some of them will keep at it. They’ll meet their goals. They’ll press on. And at the end of the year they will look back and see that they turned a big, huge corner. And that there was no going back.

The cold air in my nostrils made me smile. The Resolution Runners made me grin. I smiled at them and they must have thought I was a crazy person – this long-legged girl bounding toward them with a shit-eating grin on her head.

I wanted to cheer them all on and tell them “Good job!”

But I didn’t. I stayed quiet and smiled and put one foot in front of another over and over and over again.

I let myself have a 15 minute sauna when I got back to the gym. I closed my eyes and reminded myself of everything that was good right now, and everything good that would come to be.